FIG. 1 shows a typical computer server rack 10 with blade servers 20 disposed therein. As can be seen in FIG. 1, computer servers 20 are generally very thin, and very little tolerance exists between the individual blade servers 20 within the computer server rack 10, as well as between the blade servers 20 and the server rack 10. Further, because of the thinness of each blade server 20, little tolerance exists for components within the blade server 20.
Over time, as the performance of rack mounted computer systems has increased, the amount of heat generated by various computer system components has increased. This, in turn, requires enhanced cooling to maintain required operating temperatures. The most common approach to computer system cooling is the use of fans. However, with the ever-increasing power budget and space constraints of rack mounted computer systems, available cooling solutions are limited. Because space constraints restrict the physical size of fans, a common solution is the use of fans with high revolutions per minute (“RPM”). However, high RPM fans significantly increase the amount of vibration generated throughout the computer system.
Because of these height constraints and, consequently, the fact that there is little or no clearance between the fan and the server enclosure, vibration generated by the fan is transferred through the support structure to other components within the computer system. The generated vibration transferred throughout the computer system can negatively impact the performance of the other components. For example, hard disk drives (“HDDs”) also present in the computer system may be highly sensitive to vibrations and, thus, the performance thereof can be degraded by the transferred vibration from the fan. The problem has been compounded by the increasing density of HDDs, because the HDDs' sensitivity to vibration is also increased.
One way to alleviate the vibration issue would be to mechanically dampen the HDDs. However, due to differences in the HDD technology and manufacturing, depending on HDD design and/or manufacturer, HDDs may have varied vibration resilience properties and varied requirements for vibration-proof mounting. For example, some HDDs can be extremely sensitive to linear vibration in a high frequency range, while some HDDs can be sensitive to rotational vibrations in a low frequency range and require completely different mounting and vibration mitigation features.
A single design of a HDD bracket cannot effectively accommodate unique vibration control requirements of all available drives. This limits the choice of the qualified drives for a bracket design and, hence, limits the list of approved HDD vendors and HDD types. To meet the requirements of each HDD type by designing mechanical dampening into HDD brackets, a prohibitive number of HDD bracket designs may be required, or the number of HDDs offered may have to be reduced significantly.